There is a Dashboard app that looks like a Speedometer and shows CPU load. The tachometer version shows RAM load. Geeky, but cool. Comes with a Ferrari prancing horse on it.

Anyway, a few things will help you in Photoshop more than a faster processor. First is lots of RAM, second is a fast harddrive, and third is an external scratch drive.

I gave up desktop systems several years ago, and work off laptops. Latest is a MacBook Pro I got in January. I went for the 2.4 GHz processor, since that one offers a power saving mode that offers a slight improvement on battery life. Then I chose the faster harddrive option over the standard choice. Last was to put 4GB RAM into this, though it will hold 8GB RAM. Absolutely no complaints on speed, and I do edit video on this thing too._________________Ciao!